Page 24 of Buzz Kill (Smoke & Mirrors Tavern #7)

Chapter twenty-four

ALWIN

Billy rushed after me, likely more to escape Benning’s anger than out of any concern for me or Declan.

“He’s in medical. I’ll take you there, but they probably won’t let you in. Benning’s orders were to keep him medicated until he had a chance to deal with him. I don’t think I was supposed to hear that part, but the medical staff pushed me away from Henry and I was right behind him when he gave that order.”

“They are undeserving of your loyalty,” I informed him.

Billy was quiet for a long time as he led me through the compound to the medical area.

“Glenn,” he finally said as we turned down a corridor away from the training center. “Henry said he needed fire. When he was fightin’ that thing, I mean. He asked for it, but Benning wouldn’t give me his lighter. We all know he smokes, he keeps his cigarettes in his shirt pocket and makes no attempt to hide it. But when I asked for his lighter, he said he didn’t have one. I tried to leave the concealment circle and when Benning stopped me, I snatched the lighter from his pocket and tossed it to Henry.

“Benning yelled at me for disobeying orders, said I was nothing like the hunter my brother was and how disappointed he’d be at my behavior. But his excuse about keeping the rest of us safe don’t make much sense when tossing that lighter wouldn’t have harmed anyone. I think… I think he was going to let that thing kill Henry. After that, he didn’t stop me from going out there. Maybe he was hoping it would kill us both.”

“These people aren’t who you think they are,” I finally explained.

“What do you mean by that?” a new voice chimed in from behind us. We turned to find Nick running to catch up. “And what really happened out there? The guys are saying Benning lost his shit and threatened to punish anyone who asked about Henry.”

I didn’t answer, leaving it up to Billy to explain. Ignoring the comm system on the wall, I broke the handle on the security door keeping us out of medical and stormed inside. Billy was swearing up a storm behind me, but he stayed right on my heels none the less.

“How the fuck did you do that?”

“Tell me where Henry Harrison is,” I demanded at the small reception window.

The man there was about to respond when Billy called to me. “This way!”

He pointed to a double door away from the waiting area that was likely used for emergencies rather than illnesses, and I quickly broke that door as well.

Billy rushed through a hall with several examination rooms before coming to a door at the end. “You haven’t been here long enough,” he chattered nervously, “but they make us do physicals every six months in those rooms. I’d never been back in this part of medical until today, but it looks like they have enough equipment to do surgeries and everything here. Kinda strange, huh? Why wouldn’t we just go to a hospital for something like that? I mean, I get it if an emergency happens at the compound, but we were already pretty far from here, it would have been faster to take him to a hospital. Benning said we couldn’t explain the claw marks to humans, but I think they would have bought it if we told them we were attacked by a wild animal.”

“Maybe treating him wasn’t the only thing they were interested in,” Nick chimed in.

“Stay close to me,” I instructed.

While Nick was as hard to read as ever, Billy was clearly nervous about breaking the rules. It was too late to go back now. Benning likely had it out for him after taking Henry’s side over obeying orders. No doubt they would spend the next several weeks reinforcing the idea that Declan and I, and probably Billy as well, were the villains. In the end, the hunters relied on blind obedience to accomplish what they were doing here. Anyone that questioned that would breed dissent and ruin everything they hoped to accomplish. The nail that stood out was hammered down – or otherwise removed.

All the punishments they’d doled out to Declan hadn’t fazed him in the least. The hunters likely realized he wasn’t the obedient sort and he never would be. My chest tightened a little at the thought and I couldn’t help the tug at the corners of my lips.

“Uh, are you okay?” Billy asked cautiously.

It took a little more effort to break this door, and I answered as I applied more pressure.

“Why do you ask?”

“‘Cause that’s the first time I’ve ever seen you smile, and it’s in a situation like this?”

I backed up a few steps. “Henry doesn’t have it in him to blindly obey, it’s just not who he is. I should have known this would happen. He has his own set of morals, and he sticks to them fiercely with a conviction unlike any other, no matter what it costs him. It may seem like he doesn’t take anything seriously, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. He has more integrity than anyone I’ve met, and these men were never going to be able to crush that out of him. That made him a threat to the lies they’ve been telling you.”

My kick landed and the locking mechanism finally broke. The bent metal door swung open and the only person in the room dropped the syringe he was carrying and ran. Billy yanked the curtain back revealing Declan unconscious in the bed with various tubes attached to his arm and an IV pole with bags full of gods knew what.

I ripped the tubes out of his arm and applied pressure before checking the bandage on his side. He’d been stitched up, but the powrie had clearly gotten him pretty good with its iron pike. Not to mention the claw marks all over his arms and shoulders. He wasn’t in great shape, but he wasn’t dying. A good thing. I doubted Billy could handle watching him come back to life right now.

After my dramatic entrance into the medical wing, our time here was up. Declan clearly intended to alter our plan slightly after his latest message home and we hadn’t gotten the chance to discuss that, but Sherman was still my priority. The problem was, we hadn’t been able to explore enough of the compound while pretending to be recruits.

“I need you to do two things for me.”

“What is it?” Billy seemed eager to help, likely because he felt responsible for Declan’s condition.

“Tell me where Sherman is on the compound.”

Billy blinked at me and frowned. “There’s a separate building that the higher ups work out of and where they give their speeches to the members with money. The ones that join by contributing instead of training as recruits. It’s all the way on the other side of the compound. He had a big house built on one side of the land and the building he works out of is not far from that. Are you plannin’ on confronting Sherman about what Benning did?”

“Something like that.”

“What was the other thing you needed?” Nick prompted as I pulled Declan out of the bed and onto my back.

“I need you to get Henry out of here. He will tell you the truth about everything, but he may need your help.”

“What’s that mean?” Billy asked as we ran out of medical. “The truth about what?”

With all the security doors, medical hadn’t been heavily guarded, but the training center would be a different story. We dodged into a classroom and set Declan down against the wall. Running like this with him on my back was only going to get us so far. We had too much to accomplish and not enough time left to do it.

I reached into my holding pouch and produced the cell phone Declan used to ask Ollie and Sage about the story Beau Sherman had shared with all of his recruits. The response had been files of evidence, photos, and interviews, all of which pointed at Beau Sherman himself as the main suspect in his wife’s murder. Billy paled as he read through the messages, but Nick didn’t seem surprised at all.

His jaw clenched for a moment before he spoke. “You two aren’t hunters, are you?”

I pulled a healing spell from the pouch and looped it over Declan’s head before activating the spell. The humans wouldn’t have been able to see the magic, but Declan’s eyes opened a moment later as the claw marks on his arms faded away.

“We are not.”

Declan made a face. “Fucking hell, they pumped me so full of drugs I’m still dizzy.”

I checked the wound on his stomach finding it mostly healed over. “How are you otherwise?”

“I’ll live. Why are we hiding in a classroom? How screwed are we?”

“We are out of time,” I answered. “I’m going after Sherman. They’re going to come after me as soon as they realize where I’m heading. Get out as soon as their attention is diverted,” I instructed.

Sherman would be heavily guarded, and that would only get worse once they noticed my presence. They would likely call on everyone on the compound to track me down and that should give Declan the time needed to get away.

“Who are you?” Billy croaked.

Declan winced. “People that have been targeted by the Origin Order for months now. Everything they’ve told you is a lie. We aren’t a danger to humans, and any of us that do endanger humans are dealt with by our own kind. Just like humans, most of us are good people, but there are always exceptions. We only want to live in peace but hunters have been attacking us without provocation. They’ve been killing innocent people in our town and working with a dark mage to capture and kill our kind. They’re lying to you because they need numbers on their side, but clearly their recruits are disposable the moment they don’t fall in line.”

“You’re not human?” he choked.

Seeing that we were losing Billy, I turned to Nick. “Will you help get him out?”

Nick’s jaw clenched and he shook his head. “I’m going with you to find Sherman.”

“I will deal with Sherman on my own. If you want to leave, go with Henry.”

“That asshole killed my girlfriend. I’m going with you.”

Billy finally snapped out of his shock. “I thought you said she was killed by some kinda monster. You said it was something you didn’t even know existed.”

Nick’s cold glare turned on Billy. “My girlfriend was a shifter. She would never hurt anyone, but Sherman got a bunch of buddies and killed her and almost all of her family. I didn’t even know what a hunter was until her family was murdered one by one. I wasn’t able to protect her, but I will avenge her. The only reason I joined this fucking hellhole was to get close to him, but the coward hides in his fucking mansion and never comes out.”

That bit of news caught my attention. “You know where he is?”

“Yes. But I could never get close without blowing my cover. Recruits at our rank don’t go to that side of the compound. Higher ranking recruits are only called over when there’s a security threat.”

“Why didn’t you just call the police?” Billy asked.

Nick glared at him. “Do you think I didn’t try over and over to get someone to listen to me? The cops in his hometown know damn well that he killed his own wife, they’ve all been paid off to look the other way. The one that wrote up the original police reports and actually investigated Sherman died during a traffic stop not long after Sherman took over here. All the cops in this town are his own men. Who is going to listen? Who is going to do anything?”

“Okay,” Declan grunted as he pushed himself off the wall, wavering slightly before regaining his balance. “Enough laying around. You two go, I’ve got this.”

I pulled out a protein bar and handed it over. “Just get to the exit point.”

It wasn’t that Declan wasn’t capable, but he wasn’t fully recovered, he’d lost too much blood to be fully replenished by the healing charm. And with half the compound was out looking for him, he needed to be able to run at the very least.

He seemed to know exactly what I was thinking because he reached under his shirt and felt around for his charm. Our glamours hid the jewelry, otherwise they would have been taken from us from the start, but they could still be felt under our clothes. His fingers closed over the necklace and he pulled it over his head. The visage layered over his familiar face disappeared as he stuffed the charm in his pocket and arched an eyebrow.

“They won’t even be looking for me. Problem solved. So I’ll go cause that distraction while you find Sherman.”

Billy’s face turned red as the man exploded. “You’ve been lying to us this whole time!”

“Everything I’ve said to you since we got here is the truth,” Declan answered. “The only thing we lied about is who we are. And you would have killed us on sight, no questions asked if we didn’t.”

Billy opened his mouth to protest, but then closed it again, realizing we’d been sitting in on their classes that instructed every recruit here to attack first, ask questions later. They painted us as mindless monsters who hated, used, and fed off of humans. There wasn’t a hunter here who would have given us the benefit of the doubt and he knew it.

“What are you?” he finally asked instead.

“A sorcerer. But it’s pretty much in name only.”

“Your tattoos are showing,” I reminded him.

The sorcerer stuffed his hands in his pockets, but I pulled a pair of gloves from my holding pouch and handed them over. He was already unsteady from blood loss and the drugs they’d dosed him with, the last thing he needed was to be running around with his hands in his pockets.

“Don’t worry about the distraction,” I stressed. “Focus on getting out and don’t let them learn your identity.”

Declan took the gloves. “Don’t worry about me, you’ve got the hard job here. I’ll meet you at the exit point as soon as you’re done.”

That was far from an agreement. “Don’t do anything reckless. Follow the plan.”

“Pfft, when have you ever known me to be reckless?” Declan teased.

I gave him a warning look and the sorcerer grinned. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve got it, but you better be there. You stick to the plan and you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

For a moment, I almost believed he would do as I asked. But then he took the phone from Billy, glancing over the information there before tucking it away.

I took a step toward the man in alarm. “I will handle the distraction, just go.”

Staying in the hunter compound while out of his glamour was extremely dangerous, but wearing his glamour right now was worse. He couldn’t stay. But Declan had asked for the information from Ollie and Sage for a reason, and he’d grown too close to the men during our time here. He wanted to save them but he was in no shape to worry about anyone but himself.

“You’ve got Sherman to deal with and I’ve got the perfect distraction. I’ll meet you out there as soon as I’m done.” Declan glanced back as he reached the door. “Better get going, you’ll need the head start.”

Our eyes met and his expression told me he knew just how angry I was. This wasn’t part of the plan and he was in no shape to take on such a risk. He gave a slight shake of his head, telling me he wouldn’t be swayed, and then he walked away.

Ice formed in the pit of my stomach. As much as I wanted to go after him, I had a mission to focus on. Declan was the most stubborn man I’d ever met, and he’d made his decision. There was no talking him out of this.

Billy glanced between us and the door and then ran after Declan.

“Have a feeling that’s the last time we’ll be seeing Billy,” Nick commented. “Just hope he doesn’t get in the way. Let’s go, I’ll show you where Sherman is.”

“This is going to be extremely dangerous,” I reminded him. “There’s a reason Declan is not coming with me. It’s safer if I go on my own.”

Nick shook his head adamantly. “You said before that you would help me, was it just part of this act? Because whether you help me or not, that asshole is mine.”

Resigned, I gave him one last warning. “We do not have numbers on our side, I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to protect you if they corner us.”

“I’m not asking you to.”